Anthony Albanese fesses up: ‘We’ll blow out the deficit’

If Labor is admitting to $19bn of new spending, the actual number will be much more than that and it will increase year after year, literally forever.

Labor Leader Anthony Albanese in Brisbane on May 19, 2022. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

Bizarrely, wannabe-PM Anthony Albanese and his two would be-money managers Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher have come right out and admitted the prime minister is exactly right: yes, we, Labor, will deliver bigger budget deficits and add yet more billions to the debt.

They’ve tried to admit to ‘only’ an extra $7.4bn – of both budget deficits and government debt.

We – and they – wish.

On their own figures, and making the most optimistic and generous assumptions, it has to be between that and $19bn; and, in my judgment closer to the $19bn.

That’s the figure the trio say Labor’s promised new spending will cost in, just, the four years of the normal budget figures.

They are claiming they will make over $11bn in cuts, so the $7.4bn is the claimed net increase in spending, in the budget deficits, and the increase to government debt.

First off, all these numbers only go out four years.

The new spending doesn’t all come to a full stop in 2025-26.

Not only does it keep going, every year after that, it will keep getting bigger.

Any time a government – Labor or Liberal – initiates a new program, it starts a never-ending ever-rising spend.

Look at the NDIS. Worthy as it undoubtedly is, in 2021-22 it soaked up $30bn.

You know how much it is going to cost, just four years later, in 2025-26? Try $46bn.

That’s a staggering 53 per cent leap in just four years. What do you think it’s going to be costing in 2030?

Labor Leader Anthony Albanese in Brisbane on May 19, 2022. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

Furthermore, that $46bn in 2025-26 will almost certainly be an under-estimate.

The budgets always under-estimate what programs end up costing.

Again, just look at the NDIS.

It was supposed to cost us only $$15bn a year and rising ‘modestly’ from that.

Politicians and bureaucrats don’t seem to understand that when you offer the equivalent of a ‘free lunch’ a lot of people you didn’t expect turn up to have a feed.

If Labor is admitting to $19bn of new spending, the actual number will be much more than that; and it will build in further, increasing, increases, year after year, literally forever.

Bizarrely again, Labor has a chart showing its supposedly modest spending – on the dodgy ‘net’ basis – against the Government’s increased spending in the 2021 and 2022 budgets.

Why do I say bizarrely? Because the Labor spending would come on top of that spending.

Labor’s not going to eliminate what the government committed to.

So, if the government was spend-thrift, and clearly it was, Labor’s really saying: we will be super-spendthrift; adding out spending to the government’s.

This essentially explains why Labor hid the detail on its proposed spending blowout numbers until two days before polling day, and when there could be no more ads on TV.

The more closely they are examined, the more troubling they look.

Also Thursday, the PM and his treasurer Josh Frydenberg – and Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe - finally got that sub-4 per cent jobless rate; the lowest it’s been in nearly 50 years.

Actually, the ABS is now saying that we all got the 3.9 per cent jobless rate last month.

A month ago, the ABS reported a 4 per cent jobless rate for March.

But it’s now adjusted that number officially to 3.9 per cent; the rate it reported for April.

As I explained a couple of weeks ago, the March jobless number did fall below 4 per cent, even on the earlier ABS calculation – to 3.954 per cent.

But got rounded up to 4.0 per cent.

If just a couple of hundred people had been listed as having jobs, or not being jobless, the government would have had an extra month bragging the rate had gone below 4 per cent.

Originally published as Anthony Albanese fesses up: ‘We’ll blow out the deficit’